Different games of moral bioenhancement

Raki? has serious misgivings about Wiseman's inability to frame ethical issues in the context of transcending existing realities (the ‘is’) with the aim of achieving what we believe is morally right (the ‘ought’). This inability to think beyond the present is misguided in ethics. He also criticizes Wiseman for making the unimaginative and unsubstantiated assumption that moral bioenhancement (MBE) technologies have reached their zenith already. Raki? argues that MBE will become more effective in the time to come, that it ought to be optional for every free individual, and that it should be directed at enhancing our motivation to act in line with how we believe we ought to act. He concedes however that the enhancement of our motivation to act morally can only be effective in a limited number of morally unambiguous cases. In response, Wiseman argues that Raki?'s reflections epitomize a way of articulating MBE that is unhelpful, misguidedly optimistic, and missing the most important things needing discussion. Such reflections are based on inappropriate metaphors, a too future‐oriented view detached from basic realities, and a false sense of what is possible on the global level should MBE be applied. Such ways of thinking about MBE are misguided from the outset, and indicative of the enthusiasm for a discourse in need of realignment. This should take the form of a more modest, synergistic outlook acutely aware of the inexorable limitations imposed on MBE by the internal complexity of moral goods, human agents, and the contexts in which moral action occurs.     

Pesticide-Induced Illness—Public Health Aspects of Diagnosis and Treatment

Over the past 25 years there has been a remarkable proliferation of new chemicals into our environment, among them the 57,000 different trade-named pesticide formulations now for sale in the United States. With them have come many new problems to physicians needing up-to-the minute toxocologic information, and also sizable problems in public health. Technology must be harnessed to bring to physicians, when they need it, help in the diagnosis and treatment of poisoning and other adverse effects from modern chemicals, for at present it is impossible for the practicing physician to keep up with what is known and unknown about the toxicology of all of these chemicals.     

The Effect of Incentives and Meta-incentives on the Evolution of Cooperation

Although positive incentives for cooperators and/or negative incentives for free-riders in social dilemmas play an important role in maintaining cooperation, there is still the outstanding issue of who should pay the cost of incentives. The second-order free-rider problem, in which players who do not provide the incentives dominate in a game, is a well-known academic challenge. In order to meet this challenge, we devise and analyze a meta-incentive game that integrates positive incentives (rewards) and negative incentives (punishments) with second-order incentives, which are incentives for other players’ incentives. The critical assumption of our model is that players who tend to provide incentives to other players for their cooperative or non-cooperative behavior also tend to provide incentives to their incentive behaviors. In this paper, we solve the replicator dynamics for a simple version of the game and analytically categorize the game types into four groups. We find that the second-order free-rider problem is completely resolved without any third-order or higher (meta) incentive under the assumption. To do so, a second-order costly incentive, which is given individually (peer-to-peer) after playing donation games, is needed. The paper concludes that (1) second-order incentives for first-order reward are necessary for cooperative regimes, (2) a system without first-order rewards cannot maintain a cooperative regime, (3) a system with first-order rewards and no incentives for rewards is the worst because it never reaches cooperation, and (4) a system with rewards for incentives is more likely to be a cooperative regime than a system with punishments for incentives when the cost-effect ratio of incentives is sufficiently large. This solution is general and strong in the sense that the game does not need any centralized institution or proactive system for incentives.     

认知地图的神经环路基础

空间记忆是人类认识世界和改造世界的基本认知能力,与我们的生活息息相关.无论是寻找常用的生活物件,如钥匙和手机,还是外出上班、购物和约会,都依赖我们对周围环境的记忆.截止到目前已有大量研究从不同水平探讨大脑如何表征其周围环境,但仍然有很多未解的问题.本文系统综述了基于脑成像和神经电生理技术开展的空间记忆研究进展.通过梳理以往研究中有关生物体在构建认知地图的神经结构和神经活动规律,提出了海马结构和新皮层对空间记忆的编码环路和表征机制,并在此基础上对未来研究进行了展望.     

Numerosity estimation in visual stimuli in the absence of luminance-based cues

Background

Numerosity estimation is a basic preverbal ability that humans share with many animal species and that is believed to be foundational of numeracy skills.It is notoriously difficult, however, to establish whether numerosity estimation is based on numerosity itself, or on one or more non-numerical cues like—in visual stimuli—spatial extent and density. Frequently, different non-numerical cues are held constant on different trials. This strategy, however, still allows numerosity estimation to be based on a combination of non-numerical cues rather than on any particular one by itself.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Here we introduce a novel method, based on second-order (contrast-based) visual motion, to create stimuli that exclude all first-order (luminance-based) cues to numerosity. We show that numerosities can be estimated almost as well in second-order motion as in first-order motion.

Conclusions/Significance

The results show that numerosity estimation need not be based on first-order spatial filtering, first-order density perception, or any other processing of luminance-based cues to numerosity. Our method can be used as an effective tool to control non-numerical variables in studies of numerosity estimation.     

Materialising Oceania: New ethnographies of things in Melanesia and Polynesia

Oceania occupies an intriguing place within anthropology’s genealogy. In the introduction to this collection of essays, we examine the role of the ethnography of Oceania in the development of our anthropological perspectives on materialisation, the dynamic process by which persons and things are inter‐related. Building upon the recent resurgence of theoretical interests in things we use the term materialisation (rather than material culture or materiality) to capture the vitality of the lived processes by which ideas of objectivity and subjectivity, persons and things, minds and bodies are entangled. Taking a processual view, we advocate for an Oceanic anthropology that continues to engage with things on the ground; that asks what strategies communities use to materialise their social relations, desires and values; and that recognises how these processes remain important tools for understanding historical and contemporary Oceanic societies. Examining these locally articulated processes and forms contributes to a material (re)turn for anthropology that clarifies how we, as scholars, think about things more widely.     

谈中国植物科学基础研究与农业发展

该文讨论了加强植物科学基础研究的必要性及其对我国农业发展的重要影响。为了更好地为中国的农业发展服务,进一步加强植物科学基础研究非常重要。为了促进植物科学的发展,我国既要积极参与国际竞争,又要重视知识创新、技术发展以及技术平台建设等多个方面,还要重视传统学科如植物分类学等的发展。过去10年间,我们见证了中国科学家在植物科学领域取得的重要成就,随着越来越多的高水平人才回国,建议国家增加投入支持我国的植物科学基础研究。     

REFLECTIONS ON CONTEMPORARY PSYCHIATRY

Valid data on the effectiveness of preventive programs in psychiatry are badly needed but cannot be obtained until reliable statistics on incidence and frequency of emotional disorders are available.There is a suggestion that clear cut neuroses are less frequent but an equally strong suggestion that psychosomatic disorders are increasing in frequency. There is a tendency to look upon the increasing freedom of some aspects of our culture as a great advance over Victorian rigidity and restraint—but to what extent is this related to seeming increases in delinquency?Parents seem to have become increasingly fearful of disciplining, training or frustrating children as a result of what is considered psychiatric teaching. Psychiatry has the responsibility for correcting such a misunderstanding. Psychotherapists who have not resolved their own dependency needs are in no position to help others with the dependency problems which underlie their neurotic difficulties. Psychotherapy involves more than just arranging the world to accommodate itself to the patient (which occasionally needs to be done). The patient too, has a responsibility for his illness and its treatment and must learn that life is characterized by the need to take some chances, by dangers, difficulties, frustrations and unknowns, as well as pleasures, safety, comfort and the familiar. The responsibility for meeting the need for psychiatric services belongs to all of medicine and not just to psychiatry.     

Biodiversity,conservation and inventory: why insects matter

Western culture views insects and arachnids as pests and vermin that need to be controlled. They usually are not considered as something to be preserved. Accordingly, arthropods and other small organisms have not been taken seriously for conservation by policy makers and the conservation community at large. Having existed for more than 400 million years and after surviving the Permian and Cretaceous mass extinctions, arthropods have been the most successful of all living things and along with other invertebrates constitute more than three-quarters of today's global biodiversity. Arthropods are major components of diverse ecosystems and are the major players in functioning of ecosystem processes. Nevertheless, arthropods, which are the least known and, along with other plants and animals, are relentlessly vanishing before our eyes. Thus, aside from anthropocentric perception and societal prejudice, arthropods certainly are not pests in an ecological or evolutionary context and have an inherent biological right to exist in an evolutionary context, with ecological and instrumental values. They must be preserved because of their inherent values but also because we need them for human survival. Thus, arthropods must become an important and necessary part of the conservation strategy at all levels of environmental organization, from populations and species to ecosystems and landscapes.Insect conservation aims at saving both endangered species and ecosystem processes with a multitude of approaches targeted at different scales. Conservation efforts for arthropods are daunting because all the odds are against them: whereas species diversity, population size and biomass are so large, taxonomy and faunal information are inadequate; whereas the need for taxonomic and biodiversity information increases greatly, the shortage of taxonomic expertise worsens.Basic issues of biodiversity and the loss of species are reviewed. The goals and strategies for insect conservation are discussed with a focus on inventory and monitoring. Taxonomic and environmental surveys are compared, and the needs for biodiversity monitoring are discussed as ecological monitoring process based on inventory data. This monitoring focuses on the health of nested biodiversity (composition, structure and process) and the state of species, differing from other contemporary monitoring efforts.     

河流生态系统健康研究现状与展望——基于文献计量研究

河流生态系统健康是生态系统服务供给和流域可持续发展的基础,亟需从其内涵、影响、评价等方面进行系统归纳。运用文献计量梳理国内外文献,归纳了河流生态系统健康在河流自身、人类需求、管理目标3个方面的内涵;并从人类活动、土地利用、河流生境、水质、水量、气候变化等几个方面归纳了影响河流生态系统健康的主要因素和机理;明确了现有的河流生态系统健康评价方法,包括指示生物法、综合指标法、数学模型法等,总结了它们的优缺点和适用范围。最后,从河流生态系统健康的概念内涵、评价指标和水陆耦合等方面提出了存在的问题,建议进行流域整体的河流生态系统健康评价、跨区域的综合评价对比、多学科评价指标、河流廊道等几个方面的深入研究。     

Baboons (Papio papio) spontaneously process the first-order but not second-order configural properties of faces

A two-alternative forced-choice discrimination task was used to assess whether baboons (N=7) spontaneously process qualitative (i.e., first-order) or quantitative (i.e., second-order) variations in the configural arrangement of facial features. Experiment 1 used as test stimuli second-order pictorial faces of humans or baboons in which the mouth and the eyes were rotated upside down relative to the normal face. Baboons readily discriminated two different normal faces but did not discriminate a normal face from its second-order modified version. Experiment 2 used human or baboon faces for which the first-order configural properties had been distorted by reversing the location of the eyes and mouth within the face. Discrimination was prompt with these stimuli. Experiment 3 replicated some of the conditions and the results of experiment 1, thus ruling out possible effects of learning. It is concluded that baboons are more adept at spontaneously processing first- than second-order configural facial properties, similar to what is known in the human developmental literature.     

The Future of Anthropology

The future of anthropology depends on what it contributes, both to thought and to society. Whether it survives, flourishes, or becomes extinct depends on anthropology's ability to become an intregal and significant, yet not subservient, part of our culture and society. To flourish, we must press outward; we must mobilize our work and ourselves to make a difference beyond the discipline and the academy. This objective implies change in our priorities and hence in our work.     

Lecture 35. Types of Thinking. Thinking and Sensory Cognition

For many years our secondary schools have been oriented toward the "average" pupil. Of course, individual differences have, of necessity, been taken into account in work with retarded children and poor achievers. But children with a high receptivity to learning usually have not drawn attention to themselves. However, there is no doubt that some pupils display especially favorable conditions for mental development and the preconditions for uncommon intellectual abilities quite early.     

Meaning Matters: The Biosemiotic Basis of Bioethics

If the central problem in philosophical ethics is determining and defining the scope of moral value, our normative ethical theories must be able to explain on what basis and to what extent entities have value. The scientific foundation of contemporary biosemiotic theory grounds a theory of moral value capable of addressing this problem. Namely, it suggests that what is morally relevant is semiosis. Within this framework, semiosis is a morally relevant and natural property of all living things thereby offering us an ecological, as opposed to merely environmental, ethic. A consequence of this semiotic theory is that living things are accorded inherent moral value based on their natural relational properties—their ability to signify. This consequence establishes a hierarchy of inherent moral value based on the scope of signification: the larger the Umwelten, the greater the value. This paper argues that a robust semiotic moral theory can take into account a much wider scope of inherent value.. These consequences have positive ramifications for environmental ethics in their recognition of the natural ecological networks in which each organism is bound. This presentation of a biosemiotic model of value offers a justificatory strategy for our contemporary moral intuitions concerning our semiotic/moral relationships with living things while also productively pushing our normative ethical boundaries.     

Motion: the long and short of it

Several authors have proposed that motion is analyzed by two separate processes: short-range and long-range. We claim that the differences between short-range and long-range motion phenomena are a direct consequence of the stimuli used in the two paradigms and are not evidence for the existence of two qualitatively different motion processes. We propose that a single style of motion analysis, similar to the well known Reichardt and Marr-Ullman motion detectors, underlies all motion phenomena. Although there are different detectors of this type specialized for different visual attributes (namely first-order and second-order stimuli), they all share the same mode of operation. We review the studies of second-order motion stimuli to show that they share the basic phenomena observed for first-order stimuli. The similarity across stimulus types suggests, not parallel streams of motion extraction, one short-range and passive and the other long-range and intelligent, but a concatenation of a common mode of initial motion extraction followed by a general inference process.     

The Self as Social Artifice: Some Consequences of Stanislavski

Practice commonly develops independent of theory: only rarely does some heritable informational structure knowingly emerge. With this in mind, Biosemiotic theory is well served by an informed synthesis with Constantin Stanislavski’s theatrical technique. For it is not enough merely to catalog signage by studying the consequence of its function, we also seek to generate signs with knowing intent. This implies more than the strategic use of signs, which all complex living things do, and of which our many subjective selves emerge. It calls for an objective artifice of signs, that is, some set of techniques competent to produce subjectivity, and capable of being objectified such that it can become a knowable standard. This is precisely what Stanislavski offers, ways of knowingly creating novel, actual, believably generative, signs. Within the realm of human action and in terms of human knowing, he positively exemplifies applied semiotic theory: his approach to dramatizing fictional characters also expresses how self-consciousness comes to be. What Stanislavski implies, Charles Tilly presumes and this essay asserts: our own biotic evolution has been influenced by post-biotic or metaphoric evolution, which results from the ‘living’ interaction of certain classes of non-living things. These derive from the pragmatic a priori made implicit by Chauncey Wright, which is the motivation of living things to act on specific needs within specific situations. The need to breathe is one example; the need to make competent use of existing epistemic structures is another. But such structures have their own needs, and ‘act’ to fill them. When this is compounded culturally, it may result in self-consciousness – a self-constructed artifice of semiosis with great consequence to biotic processes. Tilly supplies evidence that such compounding happens within human society, as well as a theoretical basis for its expression as a semiotic sociology. This essay uses pragmatic semiotics to explore the strong parallels that exist between the deliberately objective motivations upon which science, sanity and self-consciousness all depend, Stanislavski’s practicable artifice of signaling pathways and social emergence, and Tilly’s approach to society as ongoing performance.     

From bone marrow to therapeutic applications: different behaviour and genetic/epigenetic stability during mesenchymal stem cell expansion in autologous and foetal bovine sera?

Bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells are a multipotent adult cellular population endowed with broad differentiation potential. Their regeneration capability, ease to undergo gene modifications, and immuno-suppressive capacity makes them optimal tools for tissue engineering, gene- and immuno-therapy. Due to the ever-increasing number of studies on the clinical applications of mesenchymal stem cells in regenerative medicine, these cells have become attractive targets in clinical transplantation. However, the identification and definition of mesenchymal stem cell culture media for their clinical application in cell therapy is currently a matter of strong discussion. Up to now, clinical studies have been conducted with mesenchymal stem cells cultured in foetal calf serum, and the chance of contamination or immunological reaction towards xenogeneic compounds must be taken into consideration. On the other hand, a serum-free medium without the addition of growth factors is not able to expand these cells in vitro; so the evaluation of which is best, among foetal calf serum, human serum (whether autologous or allogeneic) and platelet-rich plasma, is a hot topic urgently needing further research efforts. The need for the establishment of standardized protocols for mesenchymal stem cell preparations, in order not to interfere with their self-renewal and differentiation processes, assuring durable engraftment and long-term therapeutic effects, is evidently crucial. Therefore, the search for optimal culture conditions for the effective clinical-scale production of vast numbers of mesenchymal stem cells for cellular therapy is of paramount importance and the need for a robust passage from basic to translational research is fundamental.     

Pay, pride, and public purpose: why America's doctors should support universal healthcare

Discussion of universal healthcare is nothing new for US politicians or among reform advocates, policy experts, or the general public. Physicians, however, have been minor voices in the discussion. Their relative silence has been detrimental both to the public and to physicians themselves. We pose 3 arguments as to why physicians should support universal access grounded in medicine's own self-interest, arguments that are largely ignored in the current debate. These are: (1) the need for paying patients, (2) the need for a sense of self-esteem rooted in professionalism rather than commercialism, and (3) the urgency to affirm a public purpose for medicine by promoting the nation's health through universal care. Who has a stake in universal healthcare? Some groups, such as those lacking insurance, are obviously at risk and have a keen interest. Others, such as insured workers, have a less obvious but demonstrable concern. Arguments that urge adoption of an inclusive system typically focus on "healthcare horror stories" designed to evoke sympathy for the unfortunate persons whose lives are forever changed by unmet health needs or unpaid health bills. Our focus is different. We ask, regarding universal healthcare, "What's in it for physicians?" While the active support of doctors may not be a sufficient force to change the US system, it is probably a necessary one. At a minimum, universal coverage will be far less likely if physicians are opposed to it. Our aim here is to explore and discuss some of the reasons that should motivate active physician involvement in a more just and equitable system. We will discuss 3 reasons in particular. They are: (1) the need for paying patients; (2) the need to take pride in what one does--that is, the need to be nurtured by recognition of skillful professional performance in medical work, and not just rewarded monetarily; and (3) the importance of embracing a public purpose for medicine and thus engaging the trust and esteem of the population. We will examine each of these in turn, but first we will discuss briefly the other constituencies for universal coverage, since their reasons for supporting an inclusive system are often shared by doctors.     

Efficient and Accurate Time-Stepping Schemes for Integrate-and-Fire Neuronal Networks

To avoid the numerical errors associated with resetting the potential following a spike in simulations of integrate-and-fire neuronal networks, Hansel et al. and Shelley independently developed a modified time-stepping method. Their particular scheme consists of second-order Runge-Kutta time-stepping, a linear interpolant to find spike times, and a recalibration of postspike potential using the spike times. Here we show analytically that such a scheme is second order, discuss the conditions under which efficient, higher-order algorithms can be constructed to treat resets, and develop a modified fourth-order scheme. To support our analysis, we simulate a system of integrate-and-fire conductance-based point neurons with all-to-all coupling. For six-digit accuracy, our modified Runge-Kutta fourth-order scheme needs a time-step of t = 0.5 × 10^–3 seconds, whereas to achieve comparable accuracy using a recalibrated second-order or a first-order algorithm requires time-steps of 10^–5 seconds or 10^–9 seconds, respectively. Furthermore, since the cortico-cortical conductances in standard integrate-and-fire neuronal networks do not depend on the value of the membrane potential, we can attain fourth-order accuracy with computational costs normally associated with second-order schemes.